Sweet Women Lie

by Loren D. Estleman

  “A dead private investigator with evidence of treason is hard to ignore. The conclusion was inevitable: dick catches spy with his hand in the till, dick blackmails spy, spy kills dick. Using cyanide was a neat touch. A little showy, a little Technicolor and Cinemascope, but so much more in character for an egotistical snuff artist like Sahara than just a bullet. A corpse and evidence suggesting contact with people who buy government secrets. The courts would need more to convict. Usher wouldn’t.” I was watching her closely. “You must have hated Sahara’s guts and the box they came in.”

  “I did. Like I said, he used me.” She was standing clear of the door now, directly under the ceiling light. Hairline cracks showed in her make-up, like fissures in an ancient painting. “He would have gone on using me, all because I was young and stupid enough once to believe him when he said I could make the world a better place by getting my Sam to become a stooge for the Feds.” She leaned forward. “But like you said, the courts would need more to prove anything. If that piece of paper is all you’ve got … ”

  “It was gaping at me all along, but I’m slow sometimes. You might say someone had to draw me a picture. A moving picture. I screened V-8 Vampires last night.”

  “That piece of crap.”

  “I agree. The aging scene was the best thing in it. You make a convincing old lady. That’s when I remembered something Sergeant Trilby had told me, about the building cleaning crew and the scrubwoman on Pingree’s floor the morning he was killed.” I paused. “You did your own make-up in Vampires, didn’t you?”

  She laughed. It wasn’t her Malibu giggle.

  “I read about the poisoning in the papers,” she said. “Pingree’s neighbor heard a man’s voice through the wall. Not a woman’s.”

  “I already said you were no petty intriguer. You knew better than to say anything out loud in a crackerbox like that. Of course you had help. You couldn’t be sure he’d take the poison when you offered it, and small as he was you’d be no match for him if you tried to force it down his throat. There was a window washer on that floor as well.”

  “There’s one here, too.”

  The new voice was run-of-the-mill, without a regional accent. You could hear it through a wall and not be able to identify it later. It belonged to a young man in a blue suit who came through the door with a gun in his hand, an L-frame Smith & Wesson nine-millimeter automatic with twice the penetrating power of my old Police Special. His hair was short and dark blond and he had a short nose and a long upper lip and dark eyes with long Mediterranean lashes against very fair skin. He was well-proportioned and didn’t look as big as he actually was; his hand swallowed much of the large pistol. I looked at him a long time before I remembered where I’d seen him last, guarding the door to the hospital room where Sam Lucy lay plugged into an artificial life-support system.

  28

  “WHO’S GUARDING LUCY?” I asked. “Or did you finally decide that’s like locking an empty safe?”

  The big man said, “He died last night. Never regained consciousness. Gail was there.”

  “So it’s Gail, is it?” I looked at her. “You don’t let any grass grow.”

  “I did most of my scenes in one take.” She stepped out from under the direct light. “You guess pretty good. Some of the details are wrong. I told Pingree that Catherine was my brother’s wife and that I thought she was stepping out on him, not that she was having an affair with my husband. I also told him I’d tried following her myself, and that’s when I gave him the itinerary. It’s genuine, by the way. I arranged those appointments and I kept them.”

  “Ah.”

  “Bill was so charged over his precious list he insisted on telling me the names of all the people who would pay millions for it. You’d be surprised how many of them operate in this area; you’d be surprised how many of them are listed. What’s so funny?”

  I stopped grinning. “You had my sympathy for a while there. Not for Pingree, but for wanting to nail Sahara. It’s a respectable aspiration, revenge. It feels too good in practice to be as bad as the ministers say. It isn’t enough for some people, though. Some people have to make it pay.”

  “It didn’t start out like that. I set up the first meetings aboard the People Mover to lay down a background. If the itinerary wasn’t enough to hang Sahara, I could always claim I was representing his interests. But when I told them what he had and how it was obtained, the figures they mentioned made my toes curl. Yes, I had to make it pay. Why not? I earned every cent.”

  “How were you planning to deliver?”

  “If I couldn’t get the list away from Sahara, I’d have faked something when the time came. Spies are dull. They think everyone else is as dull as they are. They’d have met me more than halfway.”

  “Everyone else did,” I said. “Pingree may have been a goat, but it was a big herd.”

  “Everything I am I owe to men.”

  Her lips didn’t appear to move as she said it. It was as if I were looking at one of her posters and the words were in my head.

  “So what happens now? I should tell you I’m not thirsty.”

  She laughed again. “I wouldn’t dream of using cyanide a second time. You broke into this building, into my office. What do you think’s going to happen?”

  “I’m disappointed. Any of the hacks who wrote your stuff in the old days could have come up with a more original plot.”

  “That’s the thing about clichés. They work.” She smoothed the skirt of her coat. “Dennis is my new chief of security — bouncer to you. I don’t even have to be here for this.” She turned toward the door.

  Big Dennis gestured with the automatic. “Bring ’em up.”

  I didn’t move. “Haven’t you been listening?”

  “Up.” He flicked back the hammer.

  My revolver, which I’d been holding inside the kneehole of the desk, jumped in my hand. There’s only one sure target at that angle. The bullet punched a hole through the modesty panel and plowed into his groin. He made an indescribable noise and lost all interest in his weapon.

  He was still standing, though, when Gail Hope sent me a look over her shoulder that reminded me of her aging, decomposing vampire with the flesh peeling away from its skull and broke into a run. I raised the Smith & Wesson and took aim at her back. Not a woman’s back, not Gail Hope’s back. Not even a back. A target.

  I didn’t fire. If I had, the bullet might have passed through her and struck Sergeant Trilby. He threw both arms around her, a reflex gesture to keep his balance when she ran into him, and hung on. His service pistol was in his right hand. There was a struggle, but he held her until one of the uniforms he’d brought with him could lend some muscle. There were three of them. Two wore the blue with brown trim of the Detroit Police Department. Inspector Alderdyce would approve of that.

  Dennis chose that moment to fall. His blue serge pants were drenched with blood and urine when he toppled forward from the waist and disappeared below the edge of the desk. He groaned when he hit the floor and went on groaning.

  By this time I’d placed my gun on the desk in plain sight and folded my hands on top of my head. The two officers not involved with handcuffing Gail Hope had taken up positions on both sides of the door with their sidearms out in the two-handed stance. One of them was a large woman in her early thirties with her hair tucked up under her cap. I found out later her name was Heidi.

  “It’s okay,” Trilby said. “He’s a friendly.”

  The guns came down and my hands with them. Gail was breathing heavily with her wrists linked behind her back, looking at no one, saying nothing. Something about her had crumpled in. She looked like a little old lady, although she was barely in her forties. I had seen her do it before, but that had been in a movie, and there had been special effects involved.

  Trilby, wearing his three-button suit and car coat, holstered his revolver under his arm. I asked him how much he had heard.

  “Enough to charge. Maybe enough to convict, with that typ
ewriter. Who’s this?” He did something with his foot. Dennis’ automatic scraped across the floor and bumped into a wall.

  “He used to throw himself in front of bullets for Sam Lucy.”

  “Looks like he was good at it. That phone work?”

  “I used it to call you.”

  He dialed 911 and ordered an EMS unit. Hanging up, he looked at his watch. “Twenty-seven hours short of the deadline. Not too shabby.”

  “I’ve cut it closer,” I said.

  “What makes all this easier than just tipping me the whole shebang in the first place?”

  I rubbed my eyes. They were burning and I realized I’d been up all night. “A long time ago I represented a client who stood to lose his life if certain information reached certain people. A very long time ago: All the way back yesterday. Business isn’t so good I can afford to help kill off customers. He got killed anyway, but by then he wasn’t my client anymore. You know part of it, if your man Burack has filed his report.”

  “I read it. You brought yourself some slack when you invited us in on that show downtown. That’s all you bought. We’re not in business to provide backup for you. Next time — no, there won’t be a next time. Keep it out of East Detroit.”

  “Funny, that’s what an inspector told me a little while ago. Only he said keep it out of Detroit.”

  “Your circle’s getting tight, Walker. Maybe you ought to consider changing your methods.”

  “I considered it,” I said.

  “And?”

  “Nah.”

  I left just behind the ambulance. The paramedics thought they could help Dennis hang on to the cup of blood he had left until they got to Detroit General, after which he was somebody else’s headache. I went home to sleep, gave up on that after an hour, got up and called the hospital. A nurse told me the emergency shooting case they had taken in that morning was still in the operating room. I took a shower, shaved, dressed, rode in a cab to the lot where I’d parked my car the night before, and drove up to East Detroit to dictate the complete statement I’d promised Trilby. The tape recorder took it all down without scowling. Afterward I ate a late breakfast at the Black Bull. When I caught myself falling face first into my eggs I paid the tab and went back home and slept sixteen hours straight. I dreamed not at all.

  I was in the office at seven o’clock Monday morning. The mail wasn’t in yet and my answering service wouldn’t report for another hour, so I started a fresh pack of Winstons and called Detroit General. Dennis Arguella was critical but stable after a four-hour operation to remove a bullet and graft a new piece onto his femoral artery. After a few games of Solitaire the mailman whistled his way into the outer office and I watched two bills, a contest circular, and a picture postcard slither through the brass slot. When my curiosity overcame my inertia I got up and went over and picked up the mail. The postcard was an advertisement from a travel agency in Redford.

  I sat down awhile, stood at the window awhile, sat down again and called my service. There were no messages. I tried to interest the girl in conversation. She was polite. She told me good-bye before she hung up in my face.

  I was wired. I had enough energy for two detectives and not a kidnapped heiress or a missing set of crown jewels in sight. I thought about a vacation. What I had in savings ought to get me as far as the Ohio border if I didn’t mind pushing my car back. When the telephone finally rang I hoped it was the post office saying a check had come for me express, would I come down and sign for it? It wasn’t. It was Albert Schindler, informing me he’d found the very car I was looking for and that it would run me a thousand on top of the five hundred I’d given him. It took me a moment to remember why I’d wanted the car in the first place. I told him that case had gone sour. He said something in German and hung up without saying good-bye.

  The buzzer sounded in the outer office as I was replacing the receiver. “Enter, friend.”

  Catherine had on her silver fox coat over a black shift and black pumps. I stood up.

  “The funeral’s today,” she said without greeting. “I thought I might as well get it over with.”

  “I didn’t want it that way.”

  “Just don’t tell me you’re sorry.” She sat down and shrugged out of the coat. Her arms were bare. I couldn’t remember if funeral etiquette covered that, but it wouldn’t have mattered to her. The plain black showed off her athletic figure. “The office hasn’t changed. Same old dump.”

  I sat. “I like it.”

  It sounded defensive. She raised her eyebrows but didn’t comment. “I read about what happened. What the police say happened. I mean with the Hope woman. I couldn’t make sense out of it.”

  “You’re not supposed to. The blanket’s on. Have you heard from Pym?”

  “He stood me up Saturday night. When I tried to call his apartment I got a recording saying the number was no longer in service. The building superintendent said he’d moved out, no forwarding, with eight months to go on a year’s lease. Would you know anything about it?”

  There’d been no mention of Usher under any name in the news reports of the People Mover shooting. William Sahara was identified as a despondent civil servant whom police had slain in a hostage situation. No connection was made with the Pingree murder or the arrest the next morning of former movie beach goddess Gail Hope; the media were still trying to sort out that one. “I told you why Pym was here,” I said. “Sahara’s dead, he’s gone. What else do you need?”

  She was going to fight me over it. I saw that, and I saw when she wasn’t.

  “I just wish I knew where you figured in this,” she said. “I just wish I knew that.”

  “That’s the first thing you and I ever had in common.”

  She blew out some air. “Well, I’m back where I started. Only this time I’m a widow.”

  “Any plans?”

  “Get a job, I suppose. The son of a bitch didn’t have any insurance.”

  “Spies are bum risks.”

  “So are detectives. I sure know how to pick ’em.” She got up and put on her coat. “Did you have breakfast?”

  “Are you inviting me?”

  “Don’t read anything into it.”

  I’d been playing with the picture postcard, sliding it around the blotter on its slick surface with the eraser end of a pencil. I flipped it over, looked at the picture, yellow sand and creaming surf. Then I chucked it into the wastebasket and went for my coat and hat.

  “Let’s not get married this time,” I said.

  A Biography of Loren D. Estleman

  Loren D. Estleman (b. 1952) is the award-winning author of over sixty-five novels, including mysteries and westerns.

  Raised in a Michigan farmhouse constructed in 1867, Estleman submitted his first story for publication at the age of fifteen and accumulated 160 rejection letters over the next eight years. Once The Oklahoma Punk was published in 1976, success came quickly, allowing him to quit his day job in 1980 and become a fulltime writer.

  Estleman’s most enduring character, Amos Walker, made his first appearance in 1980’s Motor City Blue, and the hardboiled Detroit private eye has been featured in twenty novels since. The fifth Amos Walker novel, Sugartown, won the Private Eye Writers of America’s Shamus Award for best hardcover novel of 1985. Estleman’s most recent Walker novel is Infernal Angels.

  Estleman has also won praise for his adventure novels set in the Old West. In 1980, The High Rocks was nominated for a National Book Award, and since then Estleman has featured its hero, Deputy U.S. Marshal Page Murdock, in seven more novels, most recently 2010’s The Book of Murdock. Estleman has received awards for many of his standalone westerns, receiving recognition for both his attention to historical detail and the elements of suspense that follow from his background as a mystery author. Journey of the Dead, a story of the man who murdered Billy the Kid, won a Spur Award from the Western Writers of America, and a Western Heritage Award from the National Cowboy Hall of Fame.

  In 1993 Estleman married
Deborah Morgan, a fellow mystery author. He lives and works in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

  Loren D. Estleman in a Davy Crockett ensemble at age three aboard the Straits of Mackinac ferry with his brother, Charles, and father, Leauvett.

  Estleman at age five in his kindergarten photograph. He grew up in Dexter, Michigan.

  Estleman in his study in Whitmore Lake, Michigan, in the 1980s. The author wrote more than forty books on the manual typewriter he is working on in this image.

  Estleman and his family. From left to right: older brother, Charles; mother, Louise; father, Leauvett; and Loren.

  Estleman and Deborah Morgan at their wedding in Springdale, Arkansas, on June 19, 1993.

  Estleman with actor Barry Corbin at the Western Heritage Awards in Oklahoma City in 1998. The author won Outstanding Western Novel for his book Journey of the Dead.

  Loren signing books at Eyecon in St. Louis in 1999. He was the guest of honor.

  Estleman and his fellow panelists at Bouchercon in 2000. From left to right: Harper Barnes, John Lutz, Loren D. Estleman, Max Allan Collins, and Stuart M. Kaminsky.

  Estleman and his wife, Deborah, signing together while on a tour through Colorado in 2003.

  Estleman with his grandson, Dylan Ray Brown, shown here writing an original story on “Papa’s” typewriter at Christmastime in 2005 in Springfield, Missouri.

  Estleman with his granddaughter, Lydia Morgan Hopper, as he reads her a bedtime story on New Year’s Eve 2008. Books are among Lydia’s favorite things—and “Papa” is quick to encourage this.

  Estleman and his wife, Deborah, with the late Elmer Kelton and his wife, Anne Kelton, in 2008. Estleman is holding his Elmer Kelton Award from the German Association for the Study of the Western.

  Estleman in front of the Gas City water tower, which he passed by on many a road trip. After titling one of his novels after the town, Estleman was invited for a visit by the mayor, and in February 2008 he was presented the key to the city.